“…art is something subversive. It’s something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.
…the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given…. if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order…. There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.”
–Picasso, from Life with Picasso, by F. Gilot and C. Lake
Dare I seize create an opportunity to add to anything Picasso said? Why certainly. Just my opinion, but ‘the established order’ that he mentions in a political context might find a parallel in the structure we’ve created for ourselves in our lives.
We might not wake up each day to disrupt our own lives– gratuitous disruption might become degenerative–but as society has disruptive elements in artists (rogue serial entrepreneurs, internet moguls, the better teachers at your local High School/University) to show it new directions, there’s a value in maintaining in ourselves a healthy capacity for shaking up ‘the established order’ periodically. And make no mistake: sometimes it exists for no other reason than some shrugging non-decision on our part and a dull momentum through time.
Is there a link between disruption and a healthy renewal in one’s own life? Of course there is. In many cases you call it disruption before it happens and renewal afterward.
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